THORNDIKE — Entering the week fresh off getting its winning streak snapped in bitter fashion, the Mount View baseball team was hungry to right the ship.
A loss in Game 2 of a doubleheader Saturday against Old Orchard Beach ended the Mustangs’ string of victories at six games. Mount View got back in the win column Tuesday, however, with a 5-4 win over Maranacook.
“We had a good six-game streak going, and then we lost that second game and lost it,” said Mount View sophomore Noah Hurd. “We wanted to come back, treat our next game like a playoff game and battle hard.”
Mount View was rather cold at the plate for much of this Class C battle against a Maranacook team with its own postseason ambitions. Yet an offensive explosion early in the game proved to be enough for the Mustangs, who scored five runs on six hits in the first inning and survived a fifth-inning rally by the Black Bears en route to a tight victory.
Tyler Hreben opened the game with a single for Maranacook (10-4) and quickly moved to third base following a stolen base and a passed ball. He would then score the game’s opening run with two outs in the inning as an RBI single by Nick Florek gave the Black Bears an early 1-0 advantage.
Mount View (9-5), though, would tie it in the bottom of the frame after Hurd singled, stole second and came home on an RBI single by Hunter Penney. The Mustangs would go on to add four more runs in the inning with Dakota Harriman and Levi Winslow hitting RBI singles, Sam Valleau smacking an RBI double and Miles Carter recording an RBI groundout.
“I think the key was us having the focus and the excitement level of, ‘OK, we want to get this going; we want to hit,’” said Mount View head coach Brandon Hurd, whose team batted around in the opening inning. “Once we got started hitting the ball, it just kind of carried its way through the lineup.”
Mount View would maintain its four-run lead over the next three innings as Hurd kept Maranacook hitless over that span. Yet the Mustangs’ failure to stretch the lead over that span left the door open for the Black Bears, who used three hits, a fielding error, two passed balls and a balk to plate three runs in the top of the fifth.
Maranacook’s Alex Trafton tries to avoid the tag of Mount View catcher Miles Carter while trying to score from third base during a baseball game Tuesday in Thorndike. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel
With a runner on third and just one out, though, Hurd got back-to-back strikeouts to end the inning. After the Mount View ace pitched a 1-2-3 inning in the sixth, reliever Draedyn Furrow did the same in the seventh to earn the save and secure the victory.
Hurd finished with six strikeouts and two walks and added two hits Mount View at the plate. The Mustangs also got a double and two singles from Harriman, a double from Valleau and one single each from Penney, Winslow, Declan Knowlton and Bernie Dodge.
Florek pitched 5 1/3 innings of scoreless baseball for Maranacook after Alex Trafton, who gave up all five runs, departed with two outs in the first. At the plate, the Black Bears got two singles from Hreben and one each from Florek, Jake McLaughlin and Travis Lemelin.
“We’re not focusing and showing the intensity that we need to as a team at this stage in the season,” said Maranacook head coach Eric Brown. “I think we can compete with anybody, but it’s our intensity level that’s a problem. We need to be more focused and more intense.”
That intensity gap put Maranacook at a disadvantage early against a Mount View team eager to bounce back after its tough loss to Old Orchard Beach. Even as the Mustangs’ bats cooled off following the first-inning onslaught, the shutdown pitching from Hurd and Furrow late combined with two key defensive plays from Penney at second base gave the home team the win it needed.
“We really beat ourselves down in Old Orchard, and I said, ‘Let’s see how we respond against a good team,’” Coach Hurd said. “We came out with a lot of energy with those five runs. I’d obviously like to see that spread out a little bit more, but in the end, I’ll take the win.”
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